


I'd Shoot the Sunshine into My Veins

by TulliusTrash (libroslunae)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, prompt, super gay, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:18:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7967545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libroslunae/pseuds/TulliusTrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Lams + "I woke up and you were gone?"</p><p>Alex wakes up one winter night and his personal radiator is missing. Fluff and heavy angst follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd Shoot the Sunshine into My Veins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_mind_at_work](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_mind_at_work/gifts).



> PLEASE be mindful of triggers! Stay safe, no fic is worth your own suffering.  
> Title taken from Fall Out Boy, Folie a Duex, 27. If you can find the second reference to the same song in the body of this fic, I'll...I don't know, virtual high five you or something

     Alex felt the sleep weigh on him heavily, a mix of heat and cold and his large and thick blankets, one knitted out of soft material and the other warm downy. He muttered something to John along the lines of  _ come here closer, _ and when he didn’t get a reply, he turned around into John’s chest himself.

 

     Alex was half awake when he moaned into the empty spot in the bed.

 

_      Empty? _

 

     He was then  _ fully _ awake.

 

     John Laurens wasn’t in bed, and that was strange because he slept like a goddamn log, especially in the winter when they turned their heating off and allowed them to warm each other up in their body heat. But John’s spot was cold.

 

     He groaned, hoping John was in the bathroom and would come back soon. But when he glanced up at the bathroom, the light wasn’t on, the door was open.

 

_      I guess that means I have to get up and go find him,  _ Alex thought with a yawn, not looking forward to the prospect of feeling the cold floor against his feet. He took the soft blanket, the knitted one, with him. It was heavier. Heavier things made him feel safer.

 

     Alex winced at the cold floorboards, but he supposed that was what he got -- and get it he did, every morning, it was just more difficult to deal with in moonlight -- for keeping his apartment the temperature of the outdoors.

 

     “John?” he called as he walked around the apartment. It was when John was nowhere to be found that Alex began to panic.

 

     Not in the kitchen. Not in the bathroom. Not in the bedroom or closet (god forbid) or the living room. Not behind the bookshelf. Alex passed through again.

 

     “John?” He didn’t try to hide the urgency in his voice. “John?”

  
     Eventually, he put shoes on, pulled the blanket up so it didn’t drag on the floor, and left the apartment with a sigh.

 

     John wasn’t in the lobby, either. Nobody Alex asked had seen him.

 

     Alex pulled the door open and stepped into the frigid December air.

 

     There was only one place he could be, reasonably. Unreasonably, however...Alex didn’t want to think about it.

 

     Good thing he was in the reasonable place.

 

     John Laurens was slumped sadly on the small bridge over the small river back behind the apartment complex, his feet dangling over the water. He didn’t look up as Alex approached, or when Alex sat beside him.

 

     “Hey,” he muttered after a few minutes.

 

     John nodded, and the light hit his face, illuminating his tired and bloodshot eyes, playing highlights onto his cheekbones and lips and brow. 

 

     “What’s up?”

 

     And then John Laurens burst into tears, pulled his legs up onto the bridge and burying his face into his knees.

 

     “Oh,” said Alex, and unfolded his blanket to put it over the two of them. He wrapped his arms around John, one blanket corner in each hand, and nuzzled his head into John’s trembling shoulder. “Babe, what’s the matter?”

 

     “I can’t,” he whispered through sobs. “I can’t.”

 

     “You can’t tell me?”

 

     John took a deep, shaky breath. “I can’t. I can't do anything right. Why did you have to  _ come here? _ ”

 

     There was a surprising amount of hurt in his words. “John, I woke up and you were gone...I was worried. I _ am  _ worried.”

 

     “Stop, then,” he spat.

 

     Alex pulled back just enough to glimpse John’s hardened face. “No, never,” he replied, equally stubborn. “I love you, and I care about you, and I want to help you. Can you talk to me, please?”

 

     John shuddered. “I can’t.”

  
     He couldn’t help but be pained by his words -- he couldn’t imagine a world where John didn’t feel comfortable and safe with him, and he couldn’t imagine not telling John everything and anything. Alex just sighed. “Okay. That’s okay. But let me stay with you?”

 

     John didn’t reply, but Alex could tell that he wasn’t pleased with the request. 

 

     Alex slowly moved his hands around so that John was facing him fully, and Alex rubbed his back and his arms and shoulders. Little by little, he felt John relax into his touches, the crying quieting bit by bit, fewer trembles. Alex held him tightly, because he knew why John had come here, to this bridge.

 

He’d never needed words to know John Laurens.

 

     “Can I take you home?” he whispered.

 

     “Can we watch the sun come up?” John whispered back.

 

     Alex could’ve laughed with the  _ John-ness _ of the request. Ideally, he would have some pastels or watercolor, and would bother Alex all night or wake him up at four in the morning so they could watch the sun come up, and John had this unbelievable knack for knowing exactly when the sunrise was most beautiful and then capturing its essence within five minutes. Alex had image after image, sunrise after sunrise. John liked to make sunrises and sunsets for the most important of their moments.

 

     Alex had one for the night they met, which he hadn’t received  _ that night,  _ but he did have it at this point. He had one for the day Alex and John went on their first date, one for the night they’d made it official, one for their first kiss, one for the morning of their first class as juniors at Columbia, one for the morning they waited up all night to meet Laf at the airport, one for the night they decided to move in together and one for the night they first spent together, and one for that first morning. There was one anniversary morning and two anniversary nights, they’d started dating the summer after high school finished. There were three mornings and four nights, in a row, Alex kept in a little portfolio, of the days and nights John had spent with Alex in the hospital. And now there’d be one -- if John had the choice -- for the morning Alex stopped him.

 

     Alex leaned into his boyfriend. “Absolutely.”

 

     “This one I don’t need to draw,” John said quietly after a few minutes. “This one is ours, yeah?”

 

     He tried to suppress his tears, but it didn’t work. “Please,” Alex choked.

 

     John moved, finally, sighing with a small shiver against the cold. “You’re going to get sick,” he muttered, pulling Alex closer to him.

 

     “You were the one out here without a blanket.”

 

     “Well,” John laughed, “I wasn’t planning on living long enough to  _ get  _ a cold.”

 

     “John,” Alex breathed.

 

     “I may not live to see our glory,” John sighed, referencing an inside joke at a completely inappropriate time.

 

     He just tugged John closer, if there was such a thing as closer at this point, and squeezed. “I love you.”

 

     “I love you,” he replied.

 

     “But.”

 

     “What?”

  
     “There’s always a but,” Alex quipped. 

 

     “But,” muttered John, “I feel so hopeless.”

 

     Alex mulled over it for a few minutes, stroking John’s arms in a lame attempt to keep him warm. The blanket had lost almost all of its heat at this point; any longer and both of them would get sick.

 

     Sicker.

 

     “And I can’t remember.” John choked on his own words. “I can’t remember what it’s like not to feel, just, like, so empty, you know? So empty. And I love you so much that it hurts, but it doesn’t fill the empty -- no offense -- it just stabs at the edges of it and, oh, Alex, I have no idea what to do.”

 

     “I know, I know, shh.” Alex tugged John’s head down to rest on his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Just. Sometimes you just have to muster enough energy to stay alive. Just breathe, listen to your heartbeat...that’s it. If that’s all you can do, it’s enough.”

 

     “So empty,” John repeated; his words, too, sounded hollow. “Everything hurts.”

 

     “I know.”

 

     “Don’t know what to do.”

 

“Shh.”

 

     “I feel like I’m being eaten alive. Like someone ripped all of my skin off, and then hollowed my center, and my love for you is just...like, okay, this is going to sound awful, but like someone poured acid into the cavity. It just hurts, because I’m not enough.”

 

     “You’re enough,” Alex promised, feeling his stomach churn and the tears pricking at his eyes.

 

     “You deserve better.” John sounded like someone had rubbed the back of his throat with sandpaper. “Without me, you could be truly free. I’ll never let you be free.”

 

     Alex pulled away for a moment to look at John’s face, stroke his cheek, wipe a tear away from by the base of his nose. He kissed its tip. 

 

     “Without you, my world would turn upside down. Not in a good way. I need you, John.”

 

     “And I’m so disgusting to try and take myself away from you, but I just --” his voice broke -- “I can’t.”

 

     “No, no,” Alex hushed him. “It’s not selfish or disgusting or any of that.”

 

     “Awesome,” barked John sarcastically, “wow.”

 

     “No, hear me out, John --”

 

     “No way.”

 

He sighed. “What to say to you?” The way John cried broke Alex’s heart.

 

“I want,” he started, but shook his head.

 

     “You want,” Alex prompted.

 

     “I just want everyone to be happy. I make too many mistakes.”

 

     Alex leaned up and kissed John’s cheek. Against it, he whispered, “I’ll do whatever it takes. Please, just keep talking.”

 

     That was a thing John had done for him when their roles were reversed. He wouldn’t let Alex fall asleep until the ambulance came,

 

_      “No, no, Alex, please, please, just keep --” sob -- “keep talking for me, okay, please, please?” _

 

_ “John,” Alex murmured. _

 

_      “That’s it, that’s good. Babe, just keep talking. You’re great at talking. Fantastic. Please. Please just keep your mouth going for a few more minutes, okay babe?” _

 

_      “John.” _

 

     Remembering the moment sent shivers down Alex’s spine, shivers that had nothing to do with the cold.

 

     “It’s the middle of the night,” John whispered.

 

     “Good. Actually, it’s four in the morning, but good. Keep talking until the sun comes up. Anything, everything.”

 

     John sighed. “It doesn’t work on me, Alex.”

 

     “Well, I refuse to stand to the side,” Alex challenged. “You talk or I talk. And only one of those things will help you.”

 

     “Alex…”

 

     “The fact that you’re alive is a miracle,” he continued, “And miracles are best left sustained.”

 

     “That was one of those pseudo-philosophical things you made up on the spot, wasn’t it?”

 

     “Yes. But isn’t it true?”

 

     “This one was better than the spaghetti one,” John admitted. “What is it that Eliza said to you when she came to visit?”

 

     Alex thought for a minute. “Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now?”

 

     “No, the other thing. The one we used to say to each other for months after.”

 

     He smiled. That one. “I am not throwing away my shot.”

 

     John laughed, wind chimes against the windy December air. “Yeah. I am not throwing away my shot.”

 

     “Laurens, do not throw away your shot,” Alex warned.

 

     “There are a million things I haven’t done. That includes my math homework.”

 

     “There are a million things you won’t do, and your math homework is one of those things. After we see the sun come up, my dear Laurens, I’m taking you to Dr. R.”

 

     “No,” John protested.

 

     “Yes,” Alex argued.

 

     “Not immediately?”

 

     “Okay, fine. We can have breakfast and drink green tea and sit around for a little while, sure. But by the afternoon, we will.”

 

     “You hate green tea.”

 

     “You love it, though.”

 

     John sighed. “How did I get so lucky, to have you? And how come you settled for someone like me?”

  
     “John Laurens, have I ever settled for a single thing in my life?”

 

     He narrowed his eyes.

 

     “That’s right,” Alex shot back, “I haven’t. I love you, and you are worthy of it.”

 

     John laughed, still sounding like an echo. “Whatever.”

 

     “I mean it.” Alex leaned over to kiss John’s cheek again, so cold. “I love you.”

 

     “I love you, too,” John whispered, glancing down over the water. Alex’s chest panged, because he knew what John was thinking -- he was feeling guilty, because for some reason, Alex’s love wouldn’t fill the hole inside of him.

 

     “Hey,” Alex said after a little while, touching John’s chin. “Other people never have the key. It’s not your fault. If you let others become your only source of satisfaction, you  _ will _ be empty. It’s okay.”

 

     John closed his eyes and shifted suddenly, throwing his arms around Alex’s shoulders and breaking into violent sobs. “I love you so much,” he blurted somewhere between hic-- and --cup.

 

     Alex didn’t say anything until the sun came up; he just rubbed John’s back and let him cry. When the sun broke horizon, he tapped John’s right shoulder with his left hand.

 

     They watched the colors change, sniffling from hurt and cold both, shivering under the blanket and into each other, both looking at the illuminated clouds and thinking,

 

_      This one’s mine. _

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Tumblr! ciceroniantrash
> 
> Also check out my other fics! I have a long fic called A Million Things I Haven't Done, as well as a semi-historical oneshot series by the name of for love, for shame, for the revolution.


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